by Lori Weber
At Jim’s, Nanny asks me to sit beside her while she drinks her tea. Jim has a cup ready for me, too. Once again, Nanny’s eyes never leave the television, but she turns to smile at us every few minutes as though she’s really enjoying our company.
“Me and Jim’s father was born on Fox Island Harbour,” she tells me suddenly, as though I’ve just asked her where she’s from.
“Oh, that’s nice,” I say.
“It was nice, until we all had to leave. Pulled our houses across the bay to Burgeo. It looked like a house regatta,” Nanny chuckles. “Michael and I wanted to stay inside and row out the window, but, of course, we couldn’t. Some houses didn’t make it to shore.”
I look at Jim to see if I should actually ask Nanny questions to continue this story or not. He’s nodding slightly, as if to say go ahead. “Why did you have to leave?” I ask.
“Government, of course,” Nanny says forcefully, as though that was the most obvious answer in the world. “Said we were too small, not enough people to keep us going. There were only fifty of us left in the end.” Nanny’s hands seem to be shaking harder now.
“It’s all right, Nanny. We’ll tell Cheryl all about it another time, okay? We want to catch more of the day.” Jim gathers up the tea stuff on the tray. “I’ll try to be home for dinner.”
“You be careful, Jim,” Nanny says as he bends to kiss her cheek. Nanny closes her eyes and smiles, as though the feel of Jim’s lips on her skin is the most precious thing in the world to her. I think how, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear they were mother and son.
“Come back again, Cheryl, love.”
At the door, Jim clicks his tongue, and Boss runs down the hall, bouncing around in circles while Jim gets her leash.
“Nanny likes you,” Jim says when we’re in the old car.
“How can you tell?”
“By how much she was talking. She only talks to people she likes.”
“And what about you?” I regret it the minute I say it. He’ll think I’m fishing for a compliment. “I mean, I bet you talk to everyone.”
Jim smiles. “Would you believe at school people think of me as dead quiet?”
“Yeah, I do find that hard to believe.”
“You’re going to love where I’m taking you,” Jim says. “It’s Boss’s second-favourite place. Look at her. It’s like she knows.”
I turn to see Boss spread out on the back seat, her tail wagging ferociously, her tongue hanging out, like she doesn’t care if the whole world knows how she’s feeling.
•
JIM HEADS OVER a bridge, straight for a mural that depicts old-fashioned people sitting on fences and wharfs, and a string of jumping dolphins, all of it in peachy-browns. It reminds me of one of my mother’s quilts, except she’d have to add more colour.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
“Ah, it’s a surprise. First, I’ll give you a lovely tour of Shea Heights.”
“Chez? As in chez moi, chez toi, that sort of thing?”
“No. Shea—s-h-e-a—as in the place where Joey Smallwood grew up.”
“Joey who?” I say.
“Smallwood,” Jim says, loudly. “You mean you never heard of him?”
“I guess you can just add that to rocks, capelin, fossils, and fog,” I say. “Things that I’m completely ignorant about.”
“Joey Smallwood, for your information, was this province’s first premier. In fact, if it wasn’t for him, we’d probably be living in two different countries. He brought us into Confederation.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I bet you don’t know when that happened, either?”
I shake my head.
“Didn’t you learn anything about Newfoundland in school?” I shake my head again.
“Sorry. The Plains of Abraham, the Métis, the building of the great railroad. But, so far, no Newfoundland.”
“Well, don’t worry. You’ll learn about Smallwood here, at school.”
Jim doesn’t know that my mom registered me at Holy Heart, his school. For some reason, I don’t tell him. I can’t actually admit that I might be staying here for school, not to myself, and not out loud. It would make it all final and real, in a way I’m not ready to accept.
“I bet I know a few things you don’t know. I have been around, you know? I’m not a complete ignoramus.”
“Okay. Like?”
“Like, do you know how they blow up old grain elevators?”
“No, but I can guess. With dynamite, right?”
“No. Well, not the ones I saw anyway. They come in with these huge shovels that claw at the old wood like giant paws, tearing huge holes in the bottom. Eventually, the whole thing caves in. People wait for the dust and debris to settle and then carry off old pieces of wood for mementos. My father even interviewed somebody who turned it into works of art, to preserve it. He has tons of pictures of elevators, before and after the explosions. ”
“What for?”
“For his book.”
“For a book about grain elevators?”
“No, his book about different cultures. Didn’t I tell you he was writing one?”
“I don’t think so. You just told me he was here to teach.”
“Yeah, well, he’ll probably work on his book, too.” I turn to look out the window so Jim won’t ask me any more about it. I shouldn’t have mentioned the book. I don’t want it coming between us, just like it’s come between me and everything else in my life.
“My mom would cry when the elevators fell,” I say finally. I didn’t mean to share that detail. It just slipped out.
“Why?”
“Because she thought they were so beautiful. She said they were tall, elegant pieces of history just being destroyed, changing the landscape. When we’d drive around, my mom would let out a gasp whenever she saw a grain elevator in the distance. The roofs stick up first, kind of like little steeples. You can drive toward the same one for hours.”
“Guess lots of other people are losing their history, too,” Jim says. “Not just us.”
If I could, I’d tell Jim that that’s exactly what my dad’s book is about. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he knew. Maybe he’d understand what draws my dad to dying cultures. I’ve never been able to get it, but just now, describing the colourful grain elevators to Jim, I think I almost did.
We keep driving until we hit the end of the road. The sun has blasted through the clouds and mist, turning everything golden yellow. You’d never suspect there’d been so much rain this morning. Jim and I get out of the car and Boss jumps out behind us, unleashed. There are lots of other cars in the parking lot. The wind is ripping here, and I’m glad I brought my sweatshirt along.
“What is this place?” I ask.
“It’s Cape Spear,” Jim says. “The most eastern point in Canada.”
In front of us, ocean rolls forever toward the horizon. Way off to the left, past several inlets, the cliffs around the city are visible, with Cabot Tower sticking up from Signal Hill, small as a tooth. We follow a worn pathway in the grass that leads toward the rocks. Jim looks for whales as he takes big steps around the marshy spots, encouraging me to do the same. At the end of the grass, the huge red rocks begin a gradual incline to the water, stacked in uneven layers, like giant wood chips. The waves below are gentle but steady, gathering force near the shore where they crash and spit up white foam.
We hook up with a wooden walkway, which we climb, passing a much steeper mass of reddish rocks, sharp and jagged and stacked in spikier, more menacing layers all the way to the foot of the ocean. Several tourists are climbing down the rocks, toward the water. One group is a family—parents and two kids. The father stops and lines his kids up against the backdrop of ocean, then climbs back a few feet to take their picture. I guess he can’t read the huge DANGER: HAZARDOUS COASTLINE. STAY ON TRAIL sign on the path. We keep climbing and winding around the cape. The sun is low in the sky behind us, casting a sharp light out on the water, tinting it gol
d. Boss is leaping and tumbling ahead of us. Jim stops at the lookout and gazes toward the water.
“What are you looking for?” I ask.
“They gotta be out there,” he says.
“What?”
“Whales,” Jim replies. “I haven’t seen one all summer. It’s not natural, especially since the capelin are in.”
Way out in the water sits an iceberg, the first one I’ve seen since I was on the plane. It only looks inches high from here. “Hey, an iceberg,” I call, pointing. “Almost as cool as a whale—for me, anyway.”
“Late in the year for an iceberg,” Jim says. “Must’ve been a huge one.”
“Maybe it’s the one I saw from the plane, on the way in,” I say. “Looks like it could be.”
“They’d all look the same from up there,” Jim says. “You gotta get close to see their shape. Each one’s unique, just like snowflakes.”
I look up at the ridge at the top of the path and notice that a bunch of tourists are also looking at the iceberg through binoculars.
“You’re not going to quiz me on how old the iceberg is or anything?” I ask.
“Nah, I’ll let you off the hook this time,” Jim says, a faint smile playing around his lips. “Come on, let’s keep climbing,” he says, brushing my hand. “I love it up there.”
We climb a bunch of stairs to a red and white lighthouse. Jim leans against the fence that separates us from a high cliff, and I stand beside him. The fence looks old. If everyone leaned against it at once, it looks like it might collapse.
“Bet you don’t have anything that compares in Montreal,” he says.
“Nope, we don’t. But we do have a pretty neat lookout,” I say. “It’s on Mount Royal, our mountain in the middle of the city. At night the lights below are really cool.”
“But no whales, right?”
“None here either, as far as I can tell.” Our hands are close on the railing. I wish he’d put his hand on mine like he did last night. This time, I’d touch him back. It looks like he’s about to when a noisy group of people come out of the lighthouse, which is also a museum. I try to block them out, but it’s hard. They’re talking over each other about what a hard life it must have been, so cut off, such cold weather, hard to get supplies. They must be talking about the lighthouse keepers long ago. I’m starting to think there isn’t any way of life that wasn’t hard in Newfoundland.
“Come on, I know a place that’s more private,” Jim says. We go back down to a concrete clearing, where a rusty old cannon is sunk into the ground. Behind it, a square opening is cut into the hill, also made of concrete. Jim stoops into it and calls for me to follow. I step into a dim space that smells of wet stone and cold earth. We wander through the curving tunnel whose walls are covered in white, wavy patterns, sort of psychedelic. I’m sure whoever did all the drinking thought so, too; the tunnel is littered with broken beer bottles.
“Know what this is?” Jim asks.
“The deep hole of Cape Spear?” I say, shivering.
“Ha! It’s an old Second World War bunker. There were actually soldiers here at one time, because of all the U-boats, the German subs.”
“Really? Something else I obviously didn’t know.”
“Yeah, they came pretty close. We even took a direct hit by the Germans. Well, a ship moored just off the coast at Bell Island did. Come on, let’s go deeper,” Jim says. He grabs my arm and pulls me further into the tunnel, where the light is extremely dim.
“Far enough,” he says, stopping so suddenly that I smack into him. He flicks on a pocket flashlight and holds it up to his face. His mouth is wide open, like he’s screaming, and he’s shining the light into his mouth to light up the red of his gums.
“You must be a blast at Hallowe’en,” I say.
“Stick around and you might find out,” Jim says. I’m thinking how to respond when something furry rubs against me. I scream and jump at the same time, then remember Boss. But I find myself standing even closer to Jim.
“I’d like it if you stayed,” Jim says. He’s using that soft voice, the one he uses when he talks to his aunt. I’m shaking like her, too.
“You would?”
“Sure. I find you intriguing.”
“Ah! You mean I’m an enigma,” I say.
“A what? An enema?”
“Shut up!” I punch his arm, hard. He grabs my hand. I can feel his breath getting closer to my face. I’ve never actually kissed a guy before, not unless you count the time Josh Kreiger kissed me at our graduation dance in Grade Six, my last year in Montreal. But that was totally disgusting. Jim’s not disgusting, just the opposite. I close my eyes, which is dumb because it’s dark anyway.
Jim’s lips brush against mine ever so softly, and my mouth opens. The anticipation is like a million helium balloons cut loose as Jim’s tongue touches the tip of mine. My whole body moves against his, and I lose all my edges, melting into the space around me.
•
THE SCREAM CUTS the air, chopping it in half. Jim and I freeze, his mouth suspended on mine, his hands on my back, mine around his neck. Within seconds, the tail end of the scream whips through the bunker, like a gust of strong wind, blasting us apart.
“Holy—!” exclaims Jim, jumping back.
Boss takes off, barking like crazy. Jim and I follow, running back to the entrance. When I emerge, I am momentarily blinded by the late afternoon light, but Jim is already on the path, running down to the big rocks we passed earlier. Boss is way ahead of him, leaping and barking.
When I reach the rocks, I see the family that was out there earlier, gathered together about halfway down. All I can hear is crying and screaming. I know the sounds are human, but they don’t seem to be. It’s like a sound that might come from some strange mythical creature from another world.
Suddenly, I hear Jim yell, “Run up to the lighthouse and get the park rangers!” The father turns and takes off, as though Jim has switched him on. The mother, on the other hand, is still hysterical. Her arms are wrapped around a little boy and she is smothering his head against her belly.
Then it hits me—the little girl is missing. The realization is like being knocked over by a giant boulder, making it hard to breathe.
Boss is nowhere in sight. If the girl is in the water, Boss is probably in there with her, pulling her in. I remember Jim telling me about her special paws and tail, but I never thought I’d actually get to see her use them.
Jim is running back up to the wooden stand on the pathway, the one beside the warning sign the family obviously ignored. He grabs the lifesaver and rope that are hanging there, then heads back out. More people are here now, gathered beside me on the wooden lookout, the one people are not supposed to venture beyond. I wonder if I should run down to Jim and offer to help, but I don’t know what I could do. Besides, my feet feel completely paralyzed.
“Come help me,” Jim calls out and several of the men run down to join him. I can see Jim pointing below, but I can’t see what he is pointing at. I suppose it must be the girl, but I don’t have the nerve to move closer to look.
I watch Jim organize the group of men into a line and get them to hold the rope. Then he carries the lifesaver to the edge and tosses the orange ring into the air. That’s when I start to move closer, slowly, just to the edge of the first ridge. I lean over as far as I can until I can actually see the little girl. She’s fallen pretty far down, past several of the jagged layers, to land on the lower rocks. She is splayed out, her legs twisted in a weird way in front of her. The rest of her body lies perfectly still. She isn’t right at the water, but close enough. The lifesaver has landed on a shelf above her.
“There’s only thirty feet of rope,” a man says. “Not enough. What in God’s name was she doing so far out?”
By now two of the park rangers have come down with the girl’s father. They’re carrying lots of rope and another tube. “We’ve called the emergency,” one of them says. “They’ll be here soon.” Some of the tourists, mo
stly women, are inching their way to where I’m standing and shouting down encouragement to the little girl. “Won’t be long, love, hang in there.” I wonder if she can hear any of it in the whipping wind. That’s if she’s even conscious. I don’t call anything down, because I don’t think I’d have any voice right now. I’m way too freaked out. I’ve never been this close to such a dangerous situation.
“We have to get her up,” one of the rangers says. “I don’t like the look of the waves coming in. When they start cresting that way there’s always the danger of a rogue one.”
That’s when Jim steps up. “If you can get me closer with a rope, I can go down there and tie her on,” he says. “At least that would hold her.”
“I can’t let you do that, son. It’s too dangerous. We have to wait for the rescue crew. Regulations.”
“It might be too late by then,” Jim says. “Look at those waves. Put me down. I’ll be fine.”
The officials look at each other and shrug, as if they’re not sure, but they agree to do it.
“You tie yourself on, too, young man. Not just the girl.”
“Will do,” Jim says.
I watch Jim climb down toward the cold spray, the end of the long rope looped over his shoulder. I can’t believe he volunteered to do this, and I can’t believe they let him. I remember that day on Signal Hill when Jim was fooling around on the chain above the swirling water, how my heart slipped into my mouth. And he was only doing that for fun.
I am so scared right now my heart is racing, beating like it’s trying to be let out. Every part of me wants to scream at Jim to stop, to come back up. But I still can’t find my voice and wouldn’t have the nerve to use it anyway. This is obviously something Jim wants to do. Who am I to try to stop him?
I am relieved when I look down and see that Boss has somehow managed to wind her way down to the girl. She is nudging her with her giant paws, as though she’s trying to shake her awake. Everyone gasps as the girl’s arm lifts and her hand clutches Boss’s black fur, showing us she is still alive.
